It may occur to some of you that I watch a lot of videos about recovering from a bad start. You may even wonder why that is.

I would prefer not to answer that question and, to be honest, I think it is pretty rude of you to bring it up.

We’re so lucky these days to have great coaches available to us 24/7, with videos about pretty much any issue you can imagine.

Steve Hunt is one of these guys, and his stuff is always worth watching.

This is another great one with loads of fantastic tips and advice. But, as he often does, he throws in some real gems, almost as an aside. Take this little pearl (starting at 4min 25sec):

I have never come across this advice, and never thought of it myself. I suspect it works better in the top half of the fleet – sometimes the bottom half aren’t as observant, and tack into bad lanes – there’s not much you can do about that.

But, generally speaking, this is a really useful idea when looking for a good lane, especially when you are trying to come back from a poor start, or looking to work your way up the fleet in a crowded, mid-fleet position.

Of course, the rest of the video has some good advice too. Key points he makes are:

• Do not tack and do huge ducks. Small ducks of first row boats is ok, but big ducks of second or third row boats is not.
• Find the seam – find a spot where you’re on someone’s hip with no lee bow and sail fast for a little bit. Other boats will start to fall behind as they sit in worse spots or tack too much to get out of bad spots. Then you can “look around for more wind and sail towards the mark”.
• Use the boats ahead as wind indicators – a lot of us know we should do this, but how many actually do? I like his arrow idea – worth a try, especially for the more visual learners among us.
• Go straight at the top mark to clear the bad air, then engage your strategy for the leg (unless there is a good reason to do otherwise).